this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
257 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22059 readers
140 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I am very curious what price they can get this to. If traditional chicken breast is $11 a pound and this is $20, it’s going to be rough. If it’s around the same or cheaper, it could do very well!
I'm sure that it will initially cost a premium, before coming down in price as the technology matures. I'm also curious about the relative environmental impact that cultivated meat has versus raising livestock.
ETA: I found a study regarding cultured meat's environmental impact: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es200130u
According to this study, cultured meat is 7-45% more energy efficient, emits 78-96% less CO2, requires 82-96% less water, and occupies 99% less land than raising livestock.
Dang, I figured CO2 emissions would be much better than traditional livestock but I wouldn't have guessed that much better.
Livestock is a huge CO2 contributor, coupled with the fact that you have to cut down trees to make room for them, it's a huge problem.
Right? The water and ghg emission is nearly at the same level as fruits and veggies from what I can tell. That's intense. Energy use is still pretty high but I imagine that'll get optimized over time. Low key excited to try it too, I wasn't too sold on the meat alternatives from beyondmeat, but this looks very interesting.
Sign me up
Thanks for this great info
for fast-food purposes, the plant-based meats (Impossible, Beyond Meat) were generally able to get in the door at parity with alternatives from what i can tell. i'm not sure about in-grocery-store, though. they've also been racked by waning consumer interest, probably because they seem "faddish" for lack of better wording. that, i honestly think, is the biggest hurdle to cultivated meat--not price.
I buy Beyond Meat bricks for $8.99 a pound. That's pricey compared to regular beef, but I'm an outlier with pricing. I keep kosher at home and kosher meat is VERY expensive. Between the price and hassle (it requires separate pots/pans, plates, utensils, etc), I keep vegetarian at home. It's just cheaper and easier.
Beyond Meat lets me cook "beef" dishes for less than kosher beef would cost me and with more flexibility. (Tonight, we had pasta and Beyond Beef meatballs with cheese - a dish I couldn't make using kosher meat.)
There's still a market for products like Beyond Beef, but I agree that they'll need to hit "normal need" price levels before it really takes off.
Oh interesting. Kosher is a whole market I didn't even think of with Beyond Meat.
Is cultured meat considered "real meat" or "kosher" for your purposes? (I hope I'm using the term correctly)
That's actually a big debate happening in the kosher community.
On one hand, you don't need to do things like check every organ for signs of illness. As long as the vat doesn't get infected with something, it's good. You also don't need to drain blood from the resulting meat since it doesn't have any.
On the other hand, if you take a cell from a living animal, is the whole mass in the vat considered a living creature? If so, eating from it might not be allowed (eating flesh from a live animal is forbidden). The lack of any kind of slaughter process could either mean they want harvested meat is fine or none of it is.
There will likely be rabbis ruling both ways for awhile before any consensus emerges. If any ever does. (Judaism is very decentralized and consensus is often difficult to impossible.)
Where is chicken breast $11 a pound? That's like pasture raised organic prices where I am in the US.
I just looked at what ShopRite said 🤷